Obama calling GOP members of congress hypocrites:

President Barack Obama suggested Monday that congressional Republicans were acting hypocritically by opposing an extension and expansion of a payroll tax cut set to expire at the end of this year.



The president assailed the GOP in a statement at the White House, accusing them of reneging on a pledge to not raise taxes by voting against a Democratic proposal that would cut extend the tax cut in 2012, and pay for it by a surtax on the wealthy.


"Now, some Republicans who have pushed back against the idea of extending this payroll tax cut have said you’ve got to pay for this tax cut. I'd just like to point out they haven't always felt that way," Obama said.


"Over the last decade, they didn't feel the need to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans ... Indeed, when the Republicans took over the House at the beginning of this year, they explicitly changed the rules to say that tax cuts don't have to be paid for. So forgive me a little bit of confusion when I hear folks insisting on tax cuts being paid for."


Obama has proposed a 3.25 percent surtax on incomes over $1 million to pay for the middleclass tax cut extensions, and extending unemployment benefits. the Republicans refused to even entertain such an idea as millionaires and billionaires, paying more in taxes – so just what have the Republicans been willing offer as a compromise? A three-year pay freeze for federal workers, and the cutting of 200,000 government jobs. This counter offer was made by Mitch McConnell – the same Mitch McConnell who stated back in 2010: “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.” The Speaker of the Republican controlled House, the orange prick, John Boehner, has suggested that he would support the bill with a rider attached that would accelerate the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and many of the other Republicans, also want the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires made permanent as a part of the deal.


Make no mistake about it, this is not about the Republicans becoming fiscally responsible, this is simply about the Republicans obstructing anything that would maintain or improve the current state of the economy – and them believing that the Obama Administration and the Democrats will be blamed for the impending economic disaster.


I hope that Obama and the Democrats gain a lot of political mileage by showing just whose interests the Republicans represent.

Ass-Clown Michele Bachmann:

Last night during the Republican debate, Michele Bachmann was asked which social programs she would cut if she became president. She responded:” I would like to go back and look at Lyndon B. Johnson’s, the Great Society.” She went on to say that the Great Society hasn’t worked, and it has put us into a modern welfare state – “if you look at China, they don’t have food stamps, and people save for their own retirement security, they don’t have AFDC, they don’t have the modern welfare state, and they’re growing.” Michele Bachmann, said???



I just find it astounding that someone as profoundly ignorant, uneducated and just plain stupid as Michele Bachmann was even elected to public office. I wonder if this ignorant idiot understands that food stamps, and the over $250,000 in farm subsidies that she received between 1995 and 2006, are all a part of the same program that she wants to cut (you hypocritical bitch).






Yes China does not have Aid for Depended Children or a food stamp program, Bachmann; however, China is a communist nation with a socialized government. And the vast majority of the workers, don’t make enough money to save for their own anything – and least of which, retirement, and they don’t have too – the government takes care of their basic needs, and their children also help support the parents when they get old as well – and this is why most couples want boys – and because of the one child law, some even kill the girls at birth. And yes Bachmann, China is in fact growing, and they’re growing mainly because of cheap labor, and free prison labor, currency manipulation and unfair trade policies, and a whole host of other reasons.


And both Bachmann and her anti-gay, gay-hating, gay husband both claim to be Christians? I wonder just what it is about the part about feeding the poor that “jesus” “said,” that they just don’t seem to understand.

Herman Cain is also the Sarah Palin’s brother from another mother:

Last night as I was watching the Republican debate and listening to these ass-clowns, trying to come up with coherent answers for simple questions on subjects that one would think that any candidate running for a chance at beating Obama in 2012, and winning the highest office in the land, would have at least taken the time to learn what the facts behind the real issues actually are?


Besides learning that the current frontrunners in this race to the bottom in this cesspool of stupidity and ignorance, both support the use of torture ("enhanced interrogation"), and Herman Cain (the Herman Cain who has said that one of his main priorities in his policy in dealing with China, would be preventing China from developing a nuclear weapon) now wants a clear objective for victory in both of the current wars being fought in the Middle East, and before we even start thinking about bringing our military personal home – sorry Herman, but you’re about 10 years late on the Middle Eastern wars, and almost 50 years late on China. And it also became very clear last night, that Herman Cain doesn’t know jack-shit about the Middle East, or about the different types of religious ideologue, and the direct effect that it has on the politics: however, Cain seems to have developed a new strategy when confronted with questions that he has no fucking clue how to answer – he simply resorts to spewing pretentious rhetoric – this became obvious last night, when he was trying to answer questions about Pakistan and Iran, and even so obvious, that even that cretin from Texas (Governor Rick Perry) looked over at him with a stunned look on his face – like wow, this guy’s even stupider than I am.


Last night’s debate took me back to the day when I heard Sarah Palin’s response to Barbara Walters’ question about if she thought that she could beat Obama in 2012, and Palin responded: “I believe so.” However, I believe Palin soon realized that she had no chance of beating Obama in 2012, or even wining the Republican nomination. So she simply decided to capitalize on her 15 minutes “fame.” Much like Newt Gingrich has been doing all along – the reality is that Gingrich has just a few too many skeletons in his closet to survive a race against Obama and win the White House – and I believe that when the door to Herman Cain’s closet is finally opened, that we’re going to find a whole fucking cemetery in his closet, and complete with an assortment of bats and ravens! And then there’s the fact that Herman Cain is also a lying psychopath:


WASHINGTON (October 10, 2011)—GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said Monday he didn't want to run for president, but God called him to join the race.


The Republican candidate told CBN News that's why he believes "God's been in this from the beginning."


Cain said that when he felt God calling him to run for president, he resisted just as Moses did after being called by God to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt.


Like Moses, Cain says he told God, "You've got the wrong person. You can't be talking about me."


Cain told CBN News that it took a lot of those "conversations with God" to overcome his reluctance to seek the presidency.






So what about the other current candidates?


Mitt Romney: he is willing to say or do almost anything that will win him points with Christian conservatives. He has already changed his positions on almost everything he stood for when he was the Governor of Massachusetts; like women’s rights, and the abortion issue; health care, and a whole host of other issues as well – and personally, I believe he would even try and change his brand of religious delusion, if he truly believed that would get him into the White House – but conservative Christians, and most of the other Christian-nuts, simply will not vote for a Mormon.


Rick Perry: he will for sure win the support of the “Religious Right,” and most of those delusional and ignorant Christian-nuts in the Deep South, but I don’t believe that most of the other Christians will support this cretin in the general election, nor will the “swing voters.” And Obama would quickly lay his ignorant and delusional, psychotic ass to waste in the debates.


I know that a lot can happen between now and the Presidential Election – but I will say it would be a safe bet that Obama will easily win his second term as President.

So what if my science is wrong? The bible is wrong – part 1:

I remember back in the 1980s when a story was circulating around within the religious community, that “genetic science,” had finally proven that the description given in the bible of “human creation,” was in fact true. That science had proven that the ancestry of every human alive on the earth today, had all been traced back to one single woman – that science had proven the story of Adam and Eve in the bible, was in fact true. The only problem was that the “proof” which they were offering, was not based on real science – in fact, in the 1980s; we simply hadn’t yet developed the technology to base such a conclusion on. So just what was the big deal about proving that the story of Adam and Eve in the bible was in fact true, and why were the religious (mainly the Christians) even willing to manufacture stories, and even tell outright lies? Because the theory of evolution was fast gaining acceptance as a fact, and without dirt man and rib woman, and the talking-snake and the original “sin” (sex) that opened up the door for every other type of “evil,” then there was also no need for a savor – the whole story about Christ dying for our sins, then all falls apart like a house of cards in the wind.



So fast forward to the twenty first century; there are mountains of evidence, which all support evolution as a fact, and with 99.999% certainty; we now know that there was never any less than 5,000 pairs of genes (10,000 almost human and human beings) involved on the road to becoming the human beings that we are today; and we now know with 99.999% certainty, that both humans and all of the great apes, all evolved from a common ancestor – so where does this leave both the stories of Adam and Eve, and the story of “our” “savor” “Jesus Christ”? It leaves them all in the dirt, where they all belonged in the first place.



You really wouldn’t think that there would be much more here to debate on this subject? But there are current debates going on among the Christian scholars:






From NPR:


According to the Bible (Genesis 2:7), this is how humanity began: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God then called the man Adam, and later created Eve from Adam's rib.


Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.


But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."


Researching The Human Genome


Venema says there is no way we can be traced back to a single couple. He says with the mapping of the human genome, it's clear that modern humans emerged from other primates as a large population — long before the Genesis time frame of a few thousand years ago. And given the genetic variation of people today, he says scientists can't get that population size below 10,000 people at any time in our evolutionary history.


To get down to just two ancestors, Venema says, "You would have to postulate that there's been this absolutely astronomical mutation rate that has produced all these new variants in an incredibly short period of time. Those types of mutation rates are just not possible. It would mutate us out of existence."






You can click (here) or anywhere in the above text and the link will take you to NPR and the whole story – it is well worth the read.


In the video below Ken Miller (a catholic) does an excellent job of explaining of how we now know that both humans and the great apes, both evolved from a common ancestor.






I’m going to explain what all of this really means to me in part 2 of this story – but I forewarn you, it will be done in the foul mouth style of The Dyslectic Atheist! But what does this all mean to you as an atheist?

Christian craziness at its finest – molesting the minds of innocent children

Many years ago, my friend tried to adopt a little stray dog that had wandered into his back yard, and had taken-up residency in his tool shed. This dog was extremely thin and mangy, and it had the worst odor of any other dog that I had ever seen before, and this odor was so bad, that I just can’t even begin to find the words, to even describe, just how bad that this dog smelled – my friend had even tried giving this dog a bath, but within minutes, this dog’s bad odor had returned, and had returned with an avenges even (this was simply the most mangy, and the most awful smelling dog that I had ever seen before).



My friend even tried feeding this dog. He had placed a large bowl, filled with dog food, right outside of the tool shed – but days went by, and this dog hadn’t eaten any of the food – it had seemed that this dog had simply disappeared. Then one night, my friend and I were cleaning some fish that we had caught, on a fishing trip the day before on a table in his back yard. And by the time that we had finished cleaning all of the fish, there was a big pile of fish heads and fish guts lying on the ground next to the table – then out of nowhere, comes this mangy and smelly little dog – snarling and growling, and foaming at the mouth. It then runs over to this big pile of dead fish parts, and then starts devouring the fish heads. And then after it had finished eating all of the fish heads, it then ran off and disappeared again.


Then over the next few weeks, my friend started finding the dead carcasses of small animals lying all over his back yard – there were dead rats, dead squirrels, dead cats, and even dead dogs - and all with parts of their heads missing.


Then one evening, and as my friend and I were sitting on the grass in his back yard, and sipping on some cold ones – out of nowhere, came this mangy and smelly little dog. It walks over to my friend and starts sniffing the back of my friends head – it then starts snarling and growling, and foaming at the mouth, and it then starts snapping at the back of my friends head, who then pulls out his pistol, and shoots this dog dead. We then dug a hole in the ground, and bury the thing. A few days later, my friend show’s me what looked like a large molehill, and it was right over the spot where we had buried this dog. We then both got shovels and started digging, but to our surprise, this dead dog was missing – my friend thought that maybe it wasn’t dead when we had buried it? And that it had simply awoke and dug itself out of the earth?


This case of the missing dead dog, had been a very troubling mystery for me for years – that was until last night, when I had watched this video -- at 5:50 in this video, this crazy and delusional, sick bitch, said to these children: “can I tell you a secret, don’t laugh if I tell you this, do you promise not to laugh – I know some kids, that have prayed for their dead animals, and they came back to life.”



Mystery solved ~ and I bet that I even know now, just what had happened to this dog’s first owner: poor kid!




Any reasonable and halfway intelligent adult and with a working brain (that is, a brain that hasn’t been halfway eaten by a Zombie-Dog – or hasn’t been halfway rotted away by Zombie-Jesus) can fully understand that my Zombie-Dog story is simply sarcasm – it’s simply a made up story – it’s simply make believe. And I would never write and post a story like this, anywhere that children the ages of the ones in this video might find it and read it.





To steal a quote from Vjack over at Atheist Revolution: “It really is remarkable, isn't it? It would be so easy to suggest that Ms. Daniels is in dire need of psychiatric treatment, but I think the more interesting question is how many others inhabit this bizarre world in which she apparently lives.”


Well, here’s one even crazier and deluded Christian bitch that we can all try on for size – and I can finally go and throw up now!




John

Changing old habits – part 2

I had no problem at all understanding and relating with the dynamics of the issues that Jane and her family were going through, as I sat there listening to Jane telling me about all of the problems that her niece was having because of her drug addiction, and her telling me about how much of a negative impact that her niece’s problems, where having on the rest of her family. The main differences in our two stories, were how we had become drug addicted, and the impacts that our addictions had on both us and our families.



In the case of her niece - there was a drug fad that had started back in the mid 1980s and early 90s, and after the introduction of crack cocaine. Some of the marijuana smoking teens and young adults, had started sprinkling crack cocaine on top of their marijuana, and then smoking the two substances together (this was called smoking primo). And some of them, even started melting both crack cocaine and black tar heroin together, and then smoking that mixture together with the marijuana – this would then sometimes lead to cocaine or heroin addiction, and sometimes like in the case of Jane’s niece, she became addicted to both heroin and crack cocaine. In my case, what led me to the path of drug addiction was the excessive use of pain medications after I had suffered a lower back injury, and had received bad advice – real bad advice from the doctors that were treating me. After about five years of suffering with chronic back pain, and injuring and reinjuring my lower back, it was then suggested (recommended) that I have back surgery, and have 3 of the disks in my lower back fused together. This sounded real great at first, until after I had done some research – not only was there no guaranty that this would end my pain – fusing the 3 disks in my back, would have also severely limited the range of motion in my back – I decided: fuck having this surgery done big-time!


The only other option left was to continue treating the pain. So I simply continued treating the pain with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and narcotic pain meds; and hoping that just like every other time before, that the pain would eventually go away. Months turned into years, but I was still taking the drugs and still suffering from the pain.


Then I had an event that sent me to the ER, the NSAIDs had caused my stomach to start bleeding. The combination of the NSAIDs, and the weak narcotics had been working extremely well in controlling my levels of pain – but now, because this event had been somewhat life threatening, my doctor stopped prescribing the NSAIDs, and he then increased the dose and the strength of the narcotics that I was taking – towards the end of my treatment, and before my doctor had retired, I was having difficulty filling all of the prescriptions that he was writing for me (he was giving me prescriptions for 30 days worth of 4 different narcotics every week). I ended up going to 4 different pharmacies each week; I was visiting at least 10 different pharmacies a month, just to get all of my drugs. By the time that my doctor had retired, my life was a real mess, and I had already started obtaining most of the drugs that I was taking, from a friend of a friend’s sister, who was also a methamphetamine dealer (drugs like oxycodone, oxycontin and other powerful narcotic pills, trade just like cash in the illicit drug world).


About one year after my doctor had retired; I was now spending between 600-800 hundred dollars a week on narcotic pain pills; and I was now totally depended on these drugs; and I was totally unable to function without these drugs.


The funny thing about all of this was, that everyone who was around me, and who knew what I was doing, could all see that I was getting myself into big trouble….that is, everyone except for me – just like being under the influence of any other intoxicating and mind altering substance, one’s perception of reality becomes seriously distorted (I thought that everything was going great, that was until my supply of available pills had been delayed for 5 days).


24 hours without popping pills was not really a big deal – the longest that I had gone without pills in the past was about 48 hours, and no problem at all. However, this time, on day 3 when I awoke, I found myself in full drug withdrawal, and I had never felt as bad as I was feeling, ever before in my life (this has to be the closest that one can get to being in the imaginary place that the Xtians call “hell”).

Later that day, I called my dealer and told her what I was going through; the first thing that she said to me was: “I told you that you were becoming a junky, I warned you.” She then offered to make some calls to see if she could find something that would help me until the pills arrived. She then called me back about ten minutes later, and told me to come over to her house. When I arrived at her house I was sick as “hell,” she introduced me to a Mexican guy that I had already known for many years, and I had also known many other members of his family – however, I never knew that they were a family of heroin dealers – she then handed me a syringe half filled with a brown liquid, and said “sorry baby, but you’re sick, and this is the best that I can do for you right now.”


As I sat there holding this syringe in my hand while talking to our Mexican friend, I learned that his family had been involved in the heroin trade for over 20 years, and that they were involved in every facet from growing the poppies to manufacturing the heroin; and that they only wholesaled large quantities of the drug. He then assured me that I was holding the best heroin that money can buy, and that I didn’t have to worry about that “flesh eating shit.” I had no clue what he was talking about, but I was so sick that I was almost willing to try anything just to feel better.


Still sick as “hell,” and sweating and shaking, I found a blood vessel in my hand, and inserted the needle, and then started injecting this shit into my body. The rush was almost instantaneous, I stopped sweating and shaking; and within 5 minutes, I was feeling better than I had felt in many years. I then looked at the syringe (still sticking out of my hand) and said out loud: “what the fuck, so this is heroin – where have you been all of my life.” I felt as if I had fallen in love again, and for the first time in a longtime; and this shit was a hell of a lot cheaper than the pills that I had been buying; I could buy enough of this shit to last me for a year or more, if I wanted; I had just found the answers, for all of my problems…or so I had thought.


The next 2 years or so just seemed to fly by; I had managed to hide my addiction from my family, and all but my closest friends (who all thought that I had lost my mind….and I had lost my mind!). It was in about the 30th month of my heroin use that my life started falling apart. Before I had managed things by prioritizing the most important things, and then shifting everything else that I had to do, to a more convenient time – the only problem was that my addiction, had started taking priority ahead of most of the other stuff in my life, including all of my main enterprises.


In short, what I was trying to get Jane to understand is that it doesn’t matter how one becomes a drug addict – in the end its all still the same….and what does matter the most is the choices that one makes after they recognize the fact that they have a problem.






The road to recovery from any type of drug addiction can be a long and tough one. And if one doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a rational treatment program, then that road to recovery can extremely long, and most often than not, one will simply find they’re going in circles and ending up right back at the place that they started from – and I’m not all that convinced that many of the expensive treatment programs, are all that better than the irrational ones are. But in the end, what it all really all comes down to is the willingness of the person to change their behavior, and being provided with the right tools to make the change.


The biggest challenge to my recovery was accepting the fact that I had a problem. The next problem that I had facing me was the fact that I didn’t even have a clue about how to began to address my addiction; moreover, I still wasn’t willing to admit to my family that I had a drug problem, and least of which, tell them that I had a heroin addiction. Then the first mistake that I made, was asking the advice of another addict while we were waiting to score some heroin from a dealer – I simply asked him, how in the hell does a person get off of heroin. He looked at me as if he was dumbfounded by my question, and then he replied: “just go into treatment – I’ve been in treatment more than a dozen times, and it has always worked for me – and it will work for you too” he then gave me the phone number to the local detoxification center; he then said: “just give them a call, and they’ll even do all of the paperwork for you.”


It took me a few more months before I made that phone call – I believe that I just couldn’t get past the part about him going into treatment more than a dozen times, and yet, he was still using heroin??? However, nothing in this world of drug addiction seemed very rational to me at the time.


The Detoxification Center:


The staff at the detoxification center was extremely polite and very professional. And despite the fact that they all claimed to be Christians, for the most part, most kept their proselytizing to a minimum. The place was divided into two parts – one part was for “medical detoxification,” and the other part provided a safe place for the addicts to await placement in a treatment program – the staff did an excellent job of finding placement in programs for most of the addicts, considering the limited resources from which they had to work with. And just like the guy who had suggested going to this place as a starting point for my recovery, I was also in and out of this place many times before I was finally assigned to a “treatment program.”


The Treatment Program:


The day that I walked into this program, I had the highest expectations; that I was going learn about all of the new science in our current understanding of chemical dependency; that I would have all of my 40 plus questions about the effects that opium derived drugs have on the body and the brain answered; and moreover, I believed that I would leave this place, armed with at least some kind of new found knowledge, which would help lead me to the path of recovery from my addiction. However, in the 89 days that I stayed at this place, the only thing in which I encountered that could even be considered, as even remotely intuitive in dealing with the issues of addiction, was an old video of a priest talking about alcoholism, and based on information that was from the 1940s and 50s. After the video had ended, a staff member asked if anyone had any questions about what the priest had talked about in the video, no one raised their hands. The only question that popped into my mind was: “I wonder just how many little boys had this guy fucked in the ass in his career as a priest?” but I also remained silent as well.


However, what I was told about drug addiction, was that drug addiction is a “disease,” and that drug use is a moral issue, and that the one suffering from the drug addiction, can never be cured of the “disease” of addiction – and that only some higher-power (Jesus Christ) can treat this disease, and that one can only pray this disease into remission through belief in a higher-power, again: Jesus – they were using superstition, ignorance and stupidity, as the only means of “treating” a very real and serious medical condition. And I was told, that the only way that I can ever be free from my drug use, was by accepting Jesus Christ as my higher-power, and as my Lord and my Savior (I thought that up to that point in my life, that I had seen and heard almost everything; however, at that moment, I realized that my State Government and my tax dollars, had sent me to see a pack of delusional fucking Witchdoctors, for the treatment of my chemical dependency).

Needles to say, I didn’t learn anything useful in this drug treatment program at all – and I soon fell right back into my drug use again. And within a few months, I was right back at the same detoxification center again, and then again – and then one more final time before I realized that I was simply repeating the same old bullshit over and over, and that I was somehow expecting that something would change (magic, higher-powers, and Jesus are not real). I realized that it was me that needed to change – I knew that there just had to be a rational way for treating chemical dependency; and although, I have many friends who are doctors, scientists and other highly educated professionals, but to my surprise, none of them, knew jack-shit about chemical dependency and drug addiction.


Then one of the doctors that I knew, just happened to mention the problems that I was dealing with to another doctor: and according to my friend, the doctor instantly replied: “I know just the person who can help your friend.” So it took about 6 weeks before he could setup a meeting. The day of the meeting, my friend who is doctor with his own office and practice, hired a doctor from a temp agency to cover for him, so that he could personally take me to meet this person. The person that we were meeting that day was a retired doctor from the State of New York, and who was also an addiction medicine specialist.


As I was explaining my problem to him, he cut me off and asked me if I was currently using anything other than heroin – I then told him that the only drug that I was using was heroin, and that I had been using it for about 3-4 years. He then said that was all he needed to know. He then explained why I had failed in all of my other attempts at rehabilitation. He then asked my friend about my background and my level of education, my friend replied: he’s a scientist. He then went on to explain how he had got into addiction medicine – he said that he had been contracted by the U.S. Military go to Asia and help treat military personal who had become addicted to heroin while serving in the Vietnam War – he said that the military was having such a big problem in finding effective ways of treating addiction, and that they didn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of all of these heroin addicts returning back to the States, so the government started a policy of not allowing the addicts to return home from Asia until they were cleaned up.


He then said that all of the other methods that they were trying to use in getting these men clean, had all been just a big failure – like AA, and all of that other hocus-pocus, superstitions and delusional religious fucking bullshit had failed – and the failure rate was well over 90 percent until we got over there with real science and real medicine – he then said:”we turned a 90 percent failure rate, into a 95 percent success rate in just a little over 6 months – and how do you think that they thanked us for all of our effort, they made us sign an agreement not to talk about any of this, once we returned State side” (at that moment, I started crying uncontrollably, I’m not really sure what had caused this emotional outburst, other than the fact that I had finally found someone who I believed could help me).


He then explained how the program works, and how with the help of my friend that I could do the whole thing as a type of self-help thing.

In less than 8 hours that day, I had learned more about heroin addiction than I had learned in the whole of this fucking nightmare. And now, I fully understood why I had failed every time that I had tried to get myself clean, and why Jane’s niece, and why almost every other type of drug user will fail using the first methods that I described. Although it took me almost 2 weeks to read and reread the material that he had gave me, before I fully understood the process, it’s really quite simple – using drugs like heroin, cause changes in the chemistry of the body. There are compounds that can be easily made, that will rapidly cause the reversal of these changes.


I then told Jane that no amount hoping, wishing or praying was going to help her niece turn her life around. And most important – the niece has to want to take the first step towards her own recovery. The main issue in dealing with heroin addiction is the fact that most addicts don’t live long enough to recover from their addictions – and the niece has now been using drugs for about twice as long as I did.


I also explained to Jane the sobering statistics that had really opened up my own eyes – less than 10 percent of the addicts who partake in these superstition based treatment programs, manage to keep their sobriety for the first year – and the ones who manage to keep their sobriety for the first five years, is less than 1 percent – and more than half of those who have managed to keep their sobriety for 5 years or longer, have done so by making their sobriety the paramount facet of their lives (this is not a rational way of recovering from an addiction – but if works for them….then good for them).


I believe that the hardest part of rationally recovering from a drug addiction for Jane to understand, was when she asked me what I was doing to remain drug free – I simply told her that I was doing absolutely nothing; that I had come to realize that only I had the power to end my addiction – and that I had simply made the choice never to abuse drugs again. And that everything that she had been told about drug addiction by those ignorant superstitious morons was simply just a big crock of fucking bullshit.


She then asked me to have a talk with her niece – I reluctantly agreed, and I did in fact talk with her niece (coming in part 3 of this story).



Today, I have been completely drug free for almost 6 years, and I have also learned simple back stretching and strengthening exercises that have been keeping my back pain free for nearly 10 years.






Knowledge combined with rationality, critical thinking and reasoning, will always prevail over religion, superstition, stupidity and ignorance – simply because they are all just different forms of the same thing.






John

Changing old habits – part 1

Earlier this year, and as the date of the “rapture” was fast approaching, I wrote in a post about how I had become a little concerned over whether or not any of the Christians that I personally knew as friends, had fallen for Harold Camping’s latest of delusional “rapture” cons. One of the friends that I called, who I will call Jane for this post, was extremely shocked over hearing from me. Jane’s sister had told her that she had heard that I had overdosed on drugs, and that I had died about 10 years ago (after joking with her, that I was calling her from “heaven,” I then told her that only part of that story was in fact true – obviously, I am still very much alive, if I am calling you on the phone). Our conversation ended on sort of a happy note – she was very happy to hear from me, and I was happy that she was still around and doing well; however, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t find anyone that I knew, who was even entertaining Harold Camping’s “rapture” bullshit – I was looking for stuff to blog about, and a new story to add to a book that I am currently writing.


Then a few weeks later, as I was checking my voicemail messages on a phone that I seldom use, I found an assortment of new messages from Jane – as I was sitting there in my car listening to her messages, I started wondering just how in the hell she had gotten my phone number. I didn’t remember giving her any of my phone numbers, or her even asking for my phone number, and I thought that my phone was setup to block my number from caller ID?

In one of her messages, she said: “if this is the John who rose from the dead, call me back, Jane.”

Just as I was deleting the last one of her numerous massages, my phone beeped – it was an incoming call from a blocked phone number. So I answered the call, it was Jane – she didn’t even say hello, she started the conversation accusing me of avoiding her calls. I then explained that I seldom even use the phone that she was calling me on, and that I only check for messages about once a week or so, or if I am expecting someone to call.


As she started into her next rant, I realized that I had left the air conditioning on from earlier that day when it was hot, but it was now night, and the air was freezing cold. And for some reason, I said out loud: “man, this fucking AC is freezing my balls off.” Up to that point in “our” conversation, she really hadn’t responded to anything that I had said, but she decided to respond to my freezing outburst.


She replied: “I wish that I was there with you, so that I could warm up your freezing balls” – followed with a deep chuckle.


She then asked me if I could have a look at her car’s AC, she then said that it had quit working last summer about a month after her car’s warranty had expired. I reluctantly answered: sure, and we then made an appointment to meet a few days later.


I arrived about an hour early for our scheduled rendezvous; it wasn’t that I was really enthusiastic about seeing her again after more than ten years – I was more or less trying to decide if I truly wanted to see her again. Although I have known her for more than 30 years, and we had once been real good friends – she was also a part of a chapter in my life’s past, that I prefer to leave behind me. So instinctively, I decided to park about one block away from the location where we were meeting, and then walk back to the place, when I returned back on foot to the location, she drove right up to me, and asked me why I had left the parking lot where we were going to meet (she had arrived even earlier than I had, and she had already seen me).


As I stood there looking at her sitting in her car, she said: “you look almost the same as you did ten years ago” (I thought to myself, you sure as hell don’t look the same as you did the last time that I had seen you). It was at that moment that I realized that it had actually been almost 13 years since the last time that I had seen this woman. She then said: “you were just trying to be slick, weren’t you – you still think that you are so slick, don’t you – now get your ass into this car, boy.”


I then had her drive me back to where I had parked my car so that I could get my tools and start working on the problem that she was having with her car’s AC. I started by looking at the most likely causes – like a blown fuse, a missing belt.., etc. then I used a long wire to jump voltage to the clutch on the AC compressor – the AC came on and worked like a champ. In the end what I had found that had caused the problem, was that she had been pushing the AC switch so hard, that she had damn near pushed the switch through the dashboard (the switch had simply fallen apart). Luckily, I found all of the parts for the switch, and I was able to put it back together.


Her AC was now working again, and she was real happy. As I turned to get out of her car and leave, she said: “wait, wait, and let me pay you something.”


I replied: “no, that’s not necessary, that’s what friendship is all about, isn’t it?”


She then tried to hand me a one hundred dollar bill, and saying, take it, the shop was going to charge me 400 dollars! After I refused her hundred dollar offer, she then said: “well, at least let me give you fifty.” As I sat there silently deciding what my best exit strategy might be, she then grabbed me in sort of a hugging way (like being grabbed by a starving grizzly bear as food) and then she started tickling me – she then shoved the 50 dollars down the front of my pants (I thought, what in the hell does she think that I am – one of those male pole dancers at some damn striper club, or was she just making good on her offer to warm-up my balls?).


As I reached into my pants and started pulling out these bills that were wedged between my leg and my balls, and handing them back to her, she said: “well, at least let my buy you dinner. She then said with a wide grin on her face: “after we eat, we can go to my place and have some drinks, and talk for a while” – (I really used to like this girl, and years ago, I would have done her faster than a cat could lick its own ass; however, at that moment, I felt like that I had just finished wrestling with a 300 pound horny gorilla, and that I had won – I’ve just never been into the big ones).


I then told her that I had already eaten earlier, and that I had quit drinking a few months ago.


She replied: “damn, you don’t do any of that bad stuff anymore – you must have found Jayzus” – (at that moment, I felt like lying and saying: yes, I found Jesus, and that I had also joined the priesthood – so keep your hands off of me).

I then told her that I hadn’t found either “Jayzus” or “Jesus,” or any other fictional deities, and that the only thing that I had “found,” was a way of rediscovering me again.


She then got this real sad look on her face, and she started telling me about how her niece had started using drugs and alcohol at about the age of 16 and just how fucked up her life is today. She told me that her niece had been in and out of jails and drug treatment programs many times over the last 10 years, and that she had only managed to stay drug and alcohol free for short amounts of time, and only when she was attending church and working her 12 step AA/NA program. But then as soon as she stopped going to church and stopped attending her AA/NA meetings, within a few weeks, and just like clockwork, she would always start back using drugs and alcohol again. She then said that both her pastor and her AA/NA sponsor, had told her that her niece has a disease, which can only treated through “Jesus’ love,” and adherence to the 12 step program of AA/NA. So both Jane and her sister are currently trying to get the niece back into treatment again. 




She then asked me if I am still an atheist, then just how had I gotten myself off of drugs, and what was I doing today to stay drug free, and if I had any advice that might help her niece stop using drugs, and help her stay off drugs.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." Albert Einstein.






How I recovered from my addictions, and the advice that I gave Jane:

(To be continued in part 2 of this story).

This is only the second time that I have revealed this story to anyone. The first time was when I asked the advice of a friend if he thought rationality might help someone who carries the mind-virus recover from drug addiction. His only comment was: “John, you are a pussy – if I were in your shoes that day, I would have taken the 100 dollars – and I also would have fucked that fat bitch.”


I believe that he was just being evasive of the question that I asked???

We lead one to the path of reality:

Many years ago while attending a lecture on the subject of Astrophysics in the hall of local university; I met one of the most interesting Astrophysicists that I had met to date. The main subject of the speaker that evening was exploring why the observed rotation of the stars in some galaxies, didn’t seem to be following the laws of gravity contained in the Theory of Relativity. And at the close of the lecture, many of us started to mingle around the hall, and then breaking off into smaller groups. as I circulated around the small groups of scientists, while seeking clarification of one of the points that was leading to this new theory, while at the same time, I was trying to remain discreet as to not come off sounding like a complete moron, I found myself ending up in a debate with about 6 others over the subject of the Greek God(s).

I thought that at some point in the discussion, that I might be able to slip in my question, and without looking like a idiot – and as those who were engaged in the other debates started spilling outside of the hall, we all decided to head off to a nearby bar for drinks and to continue our discussion.



When our discussion resumed at the bar, I found this guy’s knowledge of Greek Mythology simply fascinating. You could name a Greek God, and this guy could tell you everything about that particular God, and even give you the timeline in Greek history. This guy had been involved in researching the connections between the old God(s) of Greek Mythology, and the New-God(s) of the desert, and their shared attributes for about 20 years – and the timeline of when these old God(s) of Greek Mythology, had began morphing into the new God(s) of the desert – including the new Jewish "God" in the bible, and his "son" "Jesus" came into being as well.


At some point in our conversation, one of the other guys in our group asked a simple but relevant question: he wondered just how many of those who proclaim to be Christians, actually understand that their entire religion evolved from mythology, including the God(s) from a whole host of other dead-religions? As we were all sitting there at the bar, while pondering his question, two other guys who seemed to have been overhearing our conversation while playing pool, slammed down their pool sticks on the on the pool table, and then they approached our group – one of them exclaiming: “what are you assholes saying, that my god isn’t real?” at this point, the bartender who had also been engaged in our conversation, and knew both of these guys by their first names, told both of them that they could either join in the conversation in a civil manner, return to their pool game, or get the fuck out of the bar. The one who had responded then said: ‘I’ll just leave then, before I start kicking some devil worshiping ass” – note; there was no mention of “Satan” or “Devils” at any time in our conversation?


The Christian, who remained, sat there listening intensively to our discussion, while the bartender explained that he had never even thought of doing this of type research, and he didn’t even know that the history of all those other 1000s of gods was even available. He then said that he had become interested enough to look into this matter himself.


Meanwhile, the pool playing Christian, who had joined in our discussion had become visible upset – he then exclaimed: “all of that stuff that was written about all of those other gods, was written by Satan to fool us into questioning whether or not Jesus is the one true god,” and he warned the bartender, that even doing that type of research, would mean that he would be questioning the truth of our one true god (Jesus). And that questioning would land him in hell.






I learned that night that you simply can’t logically debate reality with someone of religious faith when their only arguments come from emotions, and most are not even willing to look at real facts.


I ran into the bartender a few months later in a health-food and supplement store on the same AVE. as the bar was located. He thanked me and the others, for opening up his eyes to the reality that his Christian faith was based around nothing more than old stories being told as new and true stories – and that he now understands that there are no true gods - there are only true cods!


Have any of you had a similar experience – and would you try and engage in debate with someone as deluded as the pool playing Christian….I didn’t?

The idiots are coming, the idiots are coming!

Yes this brain-dead idiot, just might be coming to a town near you:





Like most other ignorant Christians living here in this nation, Palin wears her ignorance as a badge of honor -- Sarah Palin later defended her account of Paul Revere and his midnight ride, insisting that his warning essentially represented a message to the British that the revolutionaries weren't going to back down.



"I didn't mess up," the potential GOP presidential candidate said this morning on Fox News Sunday. "I answered candidly and I know my American history." Palin said???


Sarah Palin’s “one nation” bus tour is being promoted as part of a new campaign to educate and energize Americans about our nation's founding principles – of which Palin knows absolutely nothing about, nor does this ignorant fucking moron know anything about American history – it is one thing to be this stupid and ignorant, but when people like Palin are so stupid and ignorant, that they can’t even see just how stupid and ignorant that they actually are, well, that’s just sad. And what’s even sadder is the fact that millions of the American people, believe that she is more qualified than our current President to lead our nation, and that she would make an excellent President.

Are gay people becoming the new Christian’s “witch”

What would you call someone who believes that gay people are “caught in the clasp of Satan?”



Despite threats of a boycott, Home Depot chairman Frank Blake has refused to bow down to the American Family Association’s demand that the retail giant stop sponsoring gay events.


The AFA's executive vice president, Buddy Smith, attended a Home Deport board meeting Thursday to present Blake with a petition bearing almost half a million signatures of those who say they’ll stop shopping at the home improvement store until the company opts to "remain neutral in the culture war."


Smith told Bryan Fischer that Blake responded by reiterating Home Depot’s commitment to promoting diversity and vowing to “continue down the very track they’re going.”




My hat’s off to Frank Blake, for refusing to bow down to the demands of this superstitious moron and hateful homophobic and deluded Christian cretin. Frank Blake is the chairman and CEO of The Home Depot. Buddy Smith is the vice president of the American Family Association (AFA) -- a conservative organization that supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as strictly between a man and a woman.


The AFA’s use of fear and hate mongering, and outright lies and deception, in their efforts to remodel the nation into their version or vision of a “Christian nation,” and a Christian nation which conforms to their deluded worldview, is nothing new. In 2007, the AFA vehemently opposed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Senate Bill 909), while falsely claiming that the law would in effect, make illegal all of the anti-gay hate speech that was currently being spouted from the pulpit – and that even the use of “man and woman,” could become a hate crime.




So what would you call someone who believes that gay people are “caught in the clasp of Satan?” I believe that we should view these deluded cretins in the same light as we would view someone standing in the town square 500 years ago, and proclaiming that the town was under an evil attack from “witches,’ and demanding that we start burning the “witches,” in an effort to rid the town of the evil; these ignorant people are deluded – and as rational thinking people, we need to stop giving any credence to their superstitious and deluded bullshit – lest we find ourselves being tied to stakes, alongside all of the other new “witches” (freethinking atheist and gay “witches”). Frank Blake did in fact give no credence to the threats of the boycott poised by the AFA’s Buddy Smith, and his list of the “500,000” other hateful, superstitious and deluded Christian idiots and morons. And in essence saying: “fuck you, and fuck your hateful and ignorant delusion, and fuck the horse that you rode in on” – well, at least, that’s how I would have responded.



Thanks Frank Blake! And I will be doing a lot more of my shopping at The Home Depot.

Most of my Christian friends are ”rapture” proof, how about yours?

Over the past few months, I have made it a point to call some of my longtime Christians friends. Some of these folks, I had not spoken with in many years – I had become concerned about my Christians friends, after hearing about all of the stories about how some Christians had been quitting their jobs and not paying their rent and mortgages because they had become convinced that they were about to take up a new residency in “heaven” with “Jesus;” and I wondered just how many of my friends had bought into this latest of rapture delusion?

Of the 4 of my Christian friends that I have talked with, only two of them had even heard about this May 21 date with “Jesus” (I started wondering if they had been living under a rock?). One of my friends stated that he had outgrown his childish beliefs in the Christian myth, and all of the silly magic – like virgins giving birth, and dead folks rising, and heaven and hell and the likes; however, he made it a point to tell me that he still believes in a “god” – just not the “god,” in the bible???

One of my friends who I had not spoken with in about 10 or 11 years, said that she had heard that I was dead, and that I had died over ten years ago (I guess that I should contact my Christian friends more often?). I joked with her and said that I had became a Christian about ten years ago, and that I had been a part of the pre-rapture program, and that I was taken up to heaven about a week ago, and that I was calling her from heaven to make sure that she was ready for her May 21 date with “Jesus.” The sad part of this story is the fact that at first, she believed me??? And she is not your garden variety, uneducated and ignorant Christian, she’s a School Teacher???


She told me that she didn’t really believe that “Jesus” was “coming back” on Saturday – but she then said: “you can never be 100 percent sure about these kinds of things either – no one knows the date, not even Jesus knows the date of his own return – so it’s always better to play it safe; so I’ll be praying extra hard this weekend.”


I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t find a single one of my Christian friends, who were preparing for the May 21 “rapture.” However, that fact in and of its self, is the main reason why I consider these folks as my friends in the first place – I have always tried to distance myself from the more deluded Christians that I have known. I tried to explain to my Christian friend that she can in fact know the date of the rapture; and that the date of the real “rapture,” will be on the 12th of never. I told her that this latest of dates, of the hundreds of other rapture dates that folks were sure that the world would end, was derived from the mythical story of the “great flood” written in the buy-bull, and using some kind of weird math, and by a very mentally ill and deluded man.



The sad reality is the fact that some folks did in fact buy into this totally contrived and big load of horse-shit – there are those who carry this brain-rotting mind-virus of delusion, who stopped making plans for anything worldly post the May 21 “rapture.” They have in fact quit their jobs and stopped paying their rent and mortgage – some even sold their homes and used their life savings to buy space on billboards announcing the May 21 date of the “rapture.” Some have even been traveling for months now (whole families in tow) and spreading the “good news” of the coming “rapture” – some even taking their children out of school. And the sad reality is, on Sunday, some of these folks will have nothing to go back to – as they have sold everything that they owned.

As far as I know, most of my Christian friends will sail right through today’s “rapture” unaffected by this latest of Christian insanity – how about your Christian friends? Do you know anyone who fell for this “rapture” bullshit? And do we need new laws to protect those who carry this brain-rotting mind-virus of delusion from their own stupidity? And should Harold Camping be prosecuted? I’d be willing to bet that some of his willfully ignorant victims will be breaking out the pitchforks and the torches, and then heading for California!

TN State Rep. Argues Einstein Would Teach Creationism

Why are so many Christians, so hell bent on creating controversy in scientific subjects like evolution, when in fact, within the real scientific community, there is absolutely no other competing scientific theory that can even raise a single formidable argument against evolution as being a fact? I believe the answer is quite simple, science (knowledge), which proves that all of the complex life forms that we currently see here on earth today (including humans), all evolved from simpler life forms and over billions of years – and then that fact, simply lays to waste those silly and deluded, childlike stories of creation contrived and written in the bible by ignorant man. In the real scientific community, any essence of truth contained in these latest of creation fairytales contained within the bible, have long ago been debunked and put to rest -- and this new “god” in the “bible,” has now also taken its proper place alongside the countless other silly figments of mans imagination, and the ones derived from his own pure and unadulterated ignorance – Thor, Zeus, Ra…, etc, have all been consigned to the scrapheap for man’s worthless ideas, and now the fact is that science has now reserved a special place right beside them for both the new “god” and his “son” “jesus.”



Why is it so hard for Christians to accept the scientific fact that humans and apes all evolved from a common ancestor? They believe that this latest one of the 1000s of god(s) that have been contrived over human history by man, simply created man in his own image, and created man and everything including the whole universe, and all within 6 days. When in fact, science has found no evidence for any single one of the 1000s of god(s), of which the only premise for their existence, are all only rooted in fantasy and superstition contrived from the human mind – the facts are that science is real, and god(s) are not real; however, reality means very little within the minds of deluded.


The fact is that science will never again turn to god(s) in seeking answers or truth – we will never again turn to the bible for answers when confronted with a pandemic or an outbreak of a new disease. Through science we now have an understanding of what causes medical conditions such as epilepsy, and we no longer prescribe “treatments” like exorcisms and other superstitious bullshit, which were all derived from religion and the ignorant bullshit that man had written in the bible. Yet, there are those who simply can’t accept the fact that the world has moved on – the distance between our understanding of the world 2000 years ago, and our current understanding of our world through science today, can only be expressed in light-years.






So just how far will the most profoundly deluded of those who carry this mind rotting virus of ignorance and stupidity go, in resisting the reality that their religious beliefs are based on nothing more than ignorant and mindless bullshit? They have simply become willfully deceitful and started telling outright lies -- they are now claiming Albert Einstein as a Christian:











The facts are that even some of the new religious have moved away from these simply childlike arguments that the creation myth in the bible somehow holds equal weight against the real science of evolution. Even the catholic church that had resisted any and all science which had conflicted with its own “divine authority” in these matters, has accepted the science of evolution as a fact, and in less time that it took them to accept the reality that they were wrong about the earth being flat, and an earth centric universe, or the fact that pathogens, and not fucking “demons,” are the cause of sickness. 



What is currently going on in the Tennessee House of Legislation (Tennessee House of Delusion) is appalling on so many levels. For one, creationism is not by any stretch of the imagination a real science – creationism is a fixed set of false beliefs (delusion), which are solely based on non-testable conjecture written in an old book of other fairytales (the bible); and fairytales that real science has already laid to rest many times over.